


In the Dark

by runningondreams



Series: Out of Sight, Not Out Of Mind [1]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Anal Sex, Cap_Ironman Holiday Gift Exchange 2018, First Time, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Massage, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:22:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams/pseuds/runningondreams
Summary: After midnight, in a private room, just the two of them and a movie they've both already seen. Anything could happen, right?





	In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cap iron man community](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cap+iron+man+community).



> For the Community Gifts prompt: “Steve and Tony sleep together once . . . and in the morning decide to stay just friends. It'll be better this way, for sure.” Set a few years before Avengers: Disassembled in a period where Steve knows Tony is Iron Man but neither of them is public with their identities. 
> 
> Many thanks to morphia for betaing!
> 
> * * *

It’s a momentary impulse. They’re sitting together on a couch in Tony’s rooms at Avengers Mansion, watching _The Empire Strikes Back_ for the third time. Tony’s leaning against his shoulder, warm and solid, and it’s quiet and comfortable and softly intimate. Steve doesn’t really think about it, it just feels like something to do, but when he presses their hands together and laces his fingers through Tony’s, Tony goes still. He might even be holding his breath. 

Steve starts to pull away, an apology on the tip of his tongue, but Tony squeezes his hand and shifts even closer, so that their legs are pressed together at their knees, and their joined hands rest on Tony’s thigh. So . . . not objecting. In fact, given the gentle stroking of Tony’s thumb over his, Steve feels pretty safe in concluding that additional physical contact is something Tony’s in favor of. It’s unexpectedly comforting. Almost reassuring. Like an anchor point. 

It’s about ten minutes later that Tony sighs and shifts away again. He’s holding his right hand in his left, kneading at his knuckles.

“Cramp,” he says, a rueful slant to the twist of his mouth. “Too much detail work in the lab this afternoon.”

“Let me,” Steve offers. 

Tony hesitates.

“I do know something about taking care of your hands,” Steve reminds him, though there is something odd and flighty fluttering in his gut. He’s not sure he’d be offering if they were out in the group TV room. “You think that never happens to me?”

He draws Tony’s hand toward him and feels along palm and wrist and forearm experimentally. By the time he reaches Tony’s elbow he knows he was right. Tony’s hand muscles are tired and cramping, yes, but they won’t relax unless Steve can get everything else to relax too. He wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a knot in Tony’s shoulder, too, high up under the shoulder blade. 

“You need to practice better posture,” he says as he draws his fingers down Tony’s bicep and under his elbow. “And take more breaks to stretch.”

Tony’s eyes are closed, his arm going limp in Steve’s grip, but he still manages to raise a protest.

“It’s circuit soldering, not gymnastics.”

Steve works his fingers into Tony’s elbow for a moment, watching his eyelids flutter before he moves on down Tony’s forearm.

“You don’t have to hold up your own weight to strain a muscle, Tony,” he says as he gently manipulates the man’s wrist. “I do stretches and warm-ups when I draw too. I can show you some, if you want.”

“Later,” Tony murmurs. “Don’t stop.”

Steve huffs a laugh, but he doesn’t stop. He turns and pulls one leg up onto the couch so he can set Tony’s hand and wrist carefully on his own thigh. Then he moves his attention back up to Tony’s shoulder and starts massaging in earnest. By the time Luke crash-lands on Dagobah Tony is looking much more relaxed, and the tension in his arm has mostly bled away. 

Steve keeps working anyway, drawing long strokes from Tony’s shoulder to the tips of his fingers and tracing light patterns on the skin of his forearm and wrist and palm. Maybe it’s the closed door shutting out the rest of the world. Maybe it’s the darkness of the room closing around them, making him more attuned to his hands than what his eyes tell him. Either way, he’s doing less and less massage and more and more just . . . touching. There’s something mesmerizing about it. Something to do with secret identities and the hermetic seals of the Iron Man suit, maybe, or the careful distance Tony keeps between himself and most of the world. He feels weirdly grateful to be allowed this close.

When he looks up, Tony’s watching him with his eyes half-closed.

“That feels amazing,” he says. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Steve traces a line from Tony’s wrist over his palm and fingers, and Tony’s hand curls in, catching him before he can pull away completely. There’s something happening, and Steve’s not quite sure what it is. The space between them feels weighted and expectant. He’s acutely aware of the curve of Tony’s knee against the top of his foot, and Tony’s hip pressing against his own knee, and the warmth of Tony’s hand. 

Tony raises his other hand to Steve’s cheek and they’re kissing. It starts out gentle, soft and almost hesitant, and Steve lets himself melt into it a little. 

It’s like something unlocks inside him. Some need he didn’t realize he even had. Suddenly they’re kissing harder, insistent and greedy, and Tony is climbing in to his lap and running his hands through Steve’s hair, and Steve grabs his hip with one hand and runs the other up Tony’s side under his T-shirt. He spreads his fingers wide over Tony’s ribs and holds on. He can’t stop the way his hips rock up into Tony’s heat and he doesn’t want to. He just wants to touch and kiss and grind against Tony until they’re both too undone to care about secret identities, or supervillains, or what anyone in the entire world thinks of either of them. 

Tony’s hips rock under his hand and Steve can feel his cock as a firm presence against his own groin and belly, hot enough to be noticeable through too many layers of cloth. He’s just thinking he should adjust his own waistband to something a little more comfortable when Tony pulls back from the kiss slightly. He meets Steve’s eyes with an expression that’s so open and bare of dissembling that it hits like a kick in the chest.

“Please fuck me,” he says, a low half-whisper, and Steve kisses him again because _yes,_ _good idea, yes._

“Love to,” he manages to say between open-mouthed kisses. “Do you have—”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s right—” Tony tries to reach around him but gives up after a few seconds of scrabbling over the arm of the couch. “Bottom drawer in the end table,” he directs. 

“Got it.” Steve kisses him, firm and insistent, and picks him up out of his lap and sets him down further along the couch, following the kiss all the way down until Tony’s shoulders touch the cushions. “Be right back,” he promises, and goes digging. In the end table’s bottom drawer he finds lube, condoms, a box of tissues and a towel. He grabs some of everything and drops it on the floor next to Tony, who has taken the opportunity to shuck his pants and underwear and has his shirt pulled up over his head. 

Steve helps him pull it the rest of the way off and strokes his hands down Tony’s sides, over scars and nipples and ribs to his hips and his cock. Tony props himself up on his elbow and watches with dark, half-lidded eyes and Steve rubs his thumb from the base to the tip, and then over and down. 

“How do you want this to go?” Steve asks in a murmur. “Anything I should know?”

“Whatever you want,” Tony says. His breath hitches as Steve takes a firmer hold and pumps gently. 

“I want to know what _you_ want,” Steve insists. He sweeps his thumb down over Tony’s balls. “Tell me.”

Tony moans.

“I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me properly, Steve, is that specific enough for you? Are you asking for a technical description are you—” he cuts himself off, tensing. “Oh, god, don’t tell me you’ve never done this before. Is that why you’re still wearing so many clothes?”

“I’ve done this before,” Steve reassures him. He presses a kiss to the inside of Tony’s thigh. “Just want to be sure."

He lets go of Tony’s cock, and Tony is happy to take over, jerking himself off in slow, easy strokes. Steve spreads the towel under Tony’s helpfully raised hips and then quickly slips out of his t-shirt, jeans and underwear. He grabs two condoms and the lube and settles himself again between Tony’s knees. It only takes a few seconds to pull one condom over his cock and the other over his index finger, warm lube between his palms and then apply it liberally. He presses the finger gently behind Tony’s balls and smooths it back until he can massage tentatively at the ring of puckered muscle there. 

Tony breathes in through his nose, quick and sudden, but he doesn’t jerk away and he doesn’t ask Steve to stop so he keeps going, circling round with light pressure and holding on to Tony’s thigh with his other hand until he sees Tony’s face relax and feels the tension in his hips loosen. Then he presses in, just inside the opening, and Tony whimpers. 

“More,” he says, and he wiggles his hips, trying to push down harder. Steve obliges, pushing past the first ring of muscle. He touches himself while he waits for Tony to adjust to the added pressure, letting his hand stroke up and down on automatic as he watches Tony’s face.

“That is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Tony says, his voice gone slight hoarse, and Steve can’t help but laugh a little.

“You should see my view,” he says.

“Mmf.” Tony reaches for his shoulder and urges him closer, until he has to move and plant one hand on the cushion under Tony’s head to catch his balance. Tony hooks his right arm around Steve’s neck and pulls him down for more kisses, moaning into Steve’s mouth as their cocks rub together and Steve presses his finger deeper. 

It takes a lot of control to make himself go slow with Tony squirming under him and panting in his ear, sucking hard on his neck. He can feel his own heartbeat thudding ever faster, but he waits until they’re both as close to the tipping point as he can manage before he slides his finger out and presses the tip of his cock to Tony’s ass, and then in.

Tony gasps and comes on a whine, his fingernails digging points of not-quite-pain into Steve’s back and wetness spreads between them. 

“Don’t you dare stop,” Tony whispers, shuddering, so Steve doesn’t. He rocks his hips until he can push all the way in and then he holds Tony’s hips and fucks him slow and steady for as long as he can manage—which isn’t nearly as long as he would like, with Tony drawing light fingertips down his neck and urging him on with little murmurs of _Come on, fuck me, please fuck me_ and _god you’re so good, you feel so good, come for me Steve_. He comes hard enough that his vision grays to sparking lights for a moment. When he blinks them away Tony is smiling at him, the expression touched with a hint of wonder.

The aftermath is all soft movements and softer kisses. Warm cuddling bleeds into clean-up interspersed with laughter and more kisses. The movie is long over, the TV gone dark in a waiting screen, and when Steve pulls his boxer-briefs back on and then hesitates over his jeans, Tony stops him.

“Stay,” he says.

Steve does. Tony is as warm and welcoming in sharing his bed as he has been in so many other things since Steve came out of the ice. Lying beside him Steve feels calm and still, a kind of peace washing over him, and the feeling sinks into his bones and quells things he’d stopped paying attention to years ago.

He sleeps.

He wakes to sun on the windows and his phone going off. Once he’s managed to drag himself out of Tony’s embrace—a monumental effort—and out from under the covers to retrieve the thing, he finds it’s SHIELD. 

The cool, matter-of-fact tone of the agent’s message—briefing in two hours, attendance mandatory—wakes him up in a hurry. He’s not sure what’s so serious that they need to call him in on such short notice, but the fact that his Avenger’s card is still silent means its likely something involving stealth or something personal. 

By the time the call ends, Tony’s sitting up in bed going through his own messages. There’s a hickey on his collarbone and his hair is a wild mess and Steve wants nothing more than to crawl back into bed with him and stay there.

But he can’t. Not today. That’s not how this life of theirs works.

Still he can at least kiss the man, right? Give him a goodbye that somehow reflects this change between them.

He sits on the bed, close enough to touch. When Tony looks up his smile is slightly distracted.

“So, this was . . . really nice.” He shifts to sit up further against the headboard, putting just a few inches between them. “I very much . . . would like to do this again.”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, trying to work past the dissonance between Tony’s words and his actions. “Definitely.”

“But I think I have to say—between the company and the Avengers and my secret identity and the press I don’t . . . I’m probably too busy for a relationship. And you seem—you seem really busy too—”

Right. Of course. Steve’s not sure what he thought would happen. He pushes aside the twist of disappointment under his sternum and clamps down on unvoiced protests. Tony’s right. Their lives are too complicated right now to try to navigate yet another level of who-knows-what-secrets or what-rumor-is-the-press-spreading-today. Even last night’s companionship was something of a lucky occurrence: both of them awake, both at the mansion, both at loose ends. It’s better this way.

“Yeah,” he says again. “That’s probably—we shouldn’t—There’s our secret identities to think of and … I don’t even want to think what would happen if we fell out. I don’t have so many friends like you that I want to risk this.” 

Something shifts in Tony’s face. He looks away.

“You’re one of my best friends too, Cap,” he says, still not quite looking at Steve. “I should really get over to the office and it sounded like you have—” 

“I should get in uniform,” Steve agrees. He stands, feeling slightly adrift in a world that had seemed wonderfully solid just moments ago.

Tony stands too, and offers his hand.

“Friends, right?” he asks.

“Friends,” Steve confirms. He shakes Tony’s hand, trying not to think too hard about how strange that is, shaking hands after sex, and gathers up his clothes and beats a hasty retreat.

It’ll be better this way, he reminds himself. Safer and easier for them both. 

And who knows, maybe one day things will be different. Even the ice didn’t hold him back forever.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Light (The New Beginnings Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17865263) by [laireshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi)




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